Test Your Knowledge of Azure SQL Database Backup and Restore Options

Automated Backup for Azure SQL Database

• Database backups are essential for business continuity and disaster recovery strategies.
• Backups enable database restore to a point in time within the configured retention period.
• Long-term retention (LTR) can be configured for both single and pooled databases.
• Hyperscale databases use backup and restore based on storage snapshots, providing instant backup and fast restore capabilities irrespective of database size.
• Full backups are created every week, differential backups every 12 or 24 hours, and transaction log backups approximately every 10 minutes.
• By default, backups are stored in geo-redundant storage blobs that are replicated to a paired region.
• Geo-redundancy helps protect against outages that affect backup storage in the primary region.
• You can change backup storage redundancy from the default geo-redundant storage to other types of storage that keep your data within the region.
• Locally redundant storage (LRS) is the least expensive storage option, but not recommended for applications that require resiliency to regional outages or high data durability.
• Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) copies backups synchronously across three Azure availability zones in the primary region.
• Geo-redundant storage (GRS) copies backups synchronously three times within a single physical location in the primary region and asynchronously three times to a single physical location in the paired secondary region.
• Geo-restore is disabled as soon as a database is updated to use locally redundant or zone-redundant storage.